The present invention relates to conduit means such as a trough or chute for a vibratory conveyor apparatus. Such vibratory conveyor or feeder devices are employed for transporting and/or treating of bulk material, for example, wood chips, grain or the like.
Conventional vibratory conveyors usually comprise means for controlling or influencing the motion of the material to be transported. The control generally involves the variation of the oscillatory data, such as the direction of oscillation, the frequency and the amplitude of the oscillation. A further control may be achieved by adjusting the inclination of the trough conduit or chute. Further control is possible by a direct influence on the material, for example, by fluidizing the material with the aid of gases or by adding auxiliary materials to the main material.
Incidentally, in the following text the term "conduit" will be used and it is intended to include in the meaning of such term a trough, as well as a chute.
The above prior art approaches to the control or influencing of the material to be transported have two significant drawbacks. On the one hand any one of the possible control steps will uniformly influence the entire material to be transported whereby it is difficult or virtually impossible to achieve a spot control. On the other hand, varying only one of the above mentioned parameters causes simultaneously a variation of several control components, for example, the feed advance speed, as well as the intermixing of the material being conveyed. As a result, the selection of the parameters which influence the movement of the material being conveyed in prior art vibratory conveyor devices does not cause the most desirable compromises.
Where such prior art vibratory conveyors have been used, for example, for the transporting and simultaneous cleaning of sand including contaminations which are burned out, difficulties have been encountered since the temperatures involved could cause warping of the prior art conduits. This could perhaps be avoided by making the conduits of high alloyed steel. However, such steels are rather expensive. Further, even providing the inner surfaces of prior art conduits with a lining of ceramic materials has not had the desired results because such materials are subject to substantial wear and tear. Hence, the tendency of the ceramic materials to form cracks could not be avoided.